Cy has struggled with sleeping through the night since we brought him home. In the 6 months he has maybe slept 3 times through out the night. Currently he wakes up anywhere between 2 to 5 times a night. Sometimes it is only for a few minutes he is just hungry, sometimes they are a wicked fit and sometimes he is just crying. There are a variety of factors involved in his sleep issues: Night Terrors/Nightmares, Learned hunger and probably our night time ritual.
There is a big difference between night terrors and nightmares. Jeremy and I, for obvious reasons, have learned a lot about the differences. Night terrors usually occur 2 to 3 hours after the child has fallen asleep and during Non-REM sleep. What happens is the child moves from deep sleep in the non-REM stage to a lighter REM sleep. During this transition dreams appear, hence causing the night terror. What is the crazy part of the night terror is that the child doesn't know they are asleep. We have been told to stay calm and just be present in case Cy might hurt himself as he can throw himself violently around or cry. We have also been told to never wake him. They say the most common cause is sleep deprivation, but Cy is on a regular routine. He doesn't have them consistently but about once to two times a week. Children do not remember a night terror, but will remember a nightmare. Nightmares usually occur after 1am and Cy will be awake for most of those. Seems more willing to be comforted.
I found this great article on line about the Four Reasons Toddlers Wake Up. What I liked about the article is that is got me thinking on other avenues to do research because since Cy was bottled fed by his foster mother for the first two years of his life AND she fed him 2x in the night he did get use to eating. He also slept next to his foster mother for two years and we are trying to get him to sleep on his own. This transition Jeremy or I will be in the room with him for 15 minutes to an hour some nights putting him to sleep. My reading has led me to believe that our nightly ritual of rubbing his back, singing, etc can effect him when he wakes out of a sleep cycle and we are not there. The suggestion is to just put them to sleep on their own when they are awake, but we haven't even implemented that part of our process. Cy is also a total snorer. We recently took him to the doctor and they detected wheezing in his lungs. He is currently taking being treated for it with a drug to help open his airways, but who knows. So as you can tell we have a ton of factors and a TON of situations that we have experienced at night. The deal is now, how do we fix them so he sleeps through the night.
Once we figure out the key factor and reason for his sleep disturbances we might be able to solve them. I wrote this blog post because after talking with a friend from college it made me realize how common these situations are and how much more informed we can be on a personal level. My goal is to try and journal the next few weeks to keep track of why he is waking up and the reason. Then hopefully be able to track a trend. Jeremy does majority of sleep duty with Cy as once I wake up...I am up til I go to work and after a few days of that I am NO fun to be around. We shared duties for the first 4 months and I have to say I was a bitch! I could barely think and have never felt so tired. So I will update you after our experiment. I will blog each night for the two weeks and see a trend.
Peace and Love and good sleeping!
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